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Two other points worth noting 1. The FBI never had physical access to the hacked servers and were relying completely on the report from a third party company,

by craigc 8y ago

Two other points worth noting 1. The FBI never had physical access to the hacked servers and were relying completely on the report from a third party company, CrowdStrike: http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/313555-comey-fbi-did-request-access-to-hacked-dnc-servers http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/313555-comey-fbi... 2. The former tech director of the NSA, William Binney, claimed that the data could not have been copied remotely because the download speed was around 22 MB/s (176 Mb/s) which he and a team concluded was not possible for a remote hack with servers in Russia and routing through a commercial VPN service: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-evidence/ https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-r...

reefoctopus 8y ago
>During former FBI director James Comey’s testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, Comey was asked whether the FBI had ever received the DNC’s hacked hardware. >He said they did not, but obtained access from a review of the system performed by CrowdStrike, a third-party cybersecurity firm. >"We got the forensics from the pros that they hired which -- again, best practice is always to get access to the machines themselves, but this, my folks tell me, was an appropriate substitute," Comey said. >DNC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson told PolitiFact that the DNC cooperated with the FBI’s requests, which resulted in the DNC providing a copy of their server. >"An image of a server is the best thing to use in an investigation so that your exploration of the server does not change the evidence (just like you don’t want investigators leaving their own DNA around a physical crime scene) and so that the bad actors cannot make changes to the evidence while you are looking at it," Watson said. "Any suggestion that they were denied access to what they wanted for their investigation is completely incorrect." http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/jul/16/donald-trump/missing-servers-donald-trump-vladimir-putin/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/jul/...
peteretep 8y ago
> 2. The former tech director of the NSA, William Binney etc It's interesting, this is the second time I've seen this talking point in two days. The first one linked to a slightly less blog-ish source, and pointed out that this "fact" had been established in _The Nation_, a reasonably well-respected and left-sympathetic newspaper. Here's the article in The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-questions-about-last-years-dnc-hack/ https://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-qu... It now has a gigantic disclosure in front of it which takes most of the weight of the "findings" away.
- throwaway5752 8y ago
  http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/346468-why-the-latest-theory-about-the-dnc-not-being-a-hack-is-probably-wrong http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/346468-why-the-lates... "In the end, Fidelis, FireEye, SecureWorks, Threat Connect and other CrowdStrike competitors all confirmed Crowdstike’s results."
  - peteretep 8y ago
    What a great quote from that article: "I find it interesting that people are so eager to [ignore credible evidence], but willing to accept the forensics of an anonymous blogger, with no reputation, that no one knows anything about” Holy 2018.
- craigc 8y ago
  First of all, I was not presenting it as fact. Merely as a possibility and something to consider. Second, I read the disclosure, and all it does is point out that it is a possibility and not a fact. It also points out that the intelligence agencies have not provided any hard evidence that Russia was behind the leak, and they are the same groups who lied to the public about WMDs in Iraq to justify that invasion. This article also says that the original reports were published by Consortium News, the source I linked to.
throwaway5752 8y ago
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/346468-why-the-latest-theory-about-the-dnc-not-being-a-hack-is-probably-wrong http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/346468-why-the-lates... Your point two is is based on an embarrassingly incorrect assumption.
- craigc 8y ago
  I wouldn’t say it is embarrassingly incorrect. Nothing in that article proves that the report I referenced is not a possibility. I agree it makes it less likely because the files could have been copied multiple times which could change the metadata, but that doesn’t prove definitively that they were.
  - throwaway5752 8y ago
    I would. I would go further and say it is reputation-threatening (if not ending), mortifyingly embarassing for the members of VIPS that wrote and signed off on the memo. If you had hacked a well-protected target, would you go in directly through your origin? There were probably dozens of hops, some of which may have been fairly indirectly. I doubt they leaked it directly, too.
    - craigc 8y ago
      I agree, but if you had financed the operation with Bitcoin would you have left a trail of hundreds of emails specifying each Bitcoin transaction and what they were used for like the indictment claims? Only saying that if they were dumb enough to do that they may have been dumb enough to go directly too.
      - throwaway5752 8y ago
        "left a trail of hundreds of emails specifying each Bitcoin transaction" Show me where in the indictment it talks about that? I only saw a reference to a much smaller number of emails.
  - rhizome 8y ago

by craigc 8y ago

reefoctopus 8y ago

>During former FBI director James Comey’s testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, Comey was asked whether the FBI had ever received the DNC’s hacked hardware. >He said they did not, but obtained access from a review of the system performed by CrowdStrike, a third-party cybersecurity firm. >"We got the forensics from the pros that they hired which -- again, best practice is always to get access to the machines themselves, but this, my folks tell me, was an appropriate substitute," Comey said. >DNC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson told PolitiFact that the DNC cooperated with the FBI’s requests, which resulted in the DNC providing a copy of their server. >"An image of a server is the best thing to use in an investigation so that your exploration of the server does not change the evidence (just like you don’t want investigators leaving their own DNA around a physical crime scene) and so that the bad actors cannot make changes to the evidence while you are looking at it," Watson said. "Any suggestion that they were denied access to what they wanted for their investigation is completely incorrect." http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/jul/16/donald-trump/missing-servers-donald-trump-vladimir-putin/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2018/jul/...

peteretep 8y ago

> 2. The former tech director of the NSA, William Binney etc It's interesting, this is the second time I've seen this talking point in two days. The first one linked to a slightly less blog-ish source, and pointed out that this "fact" had been established in _The Nation_, a reasonably well-respected and left-sympathetic newspaper. Here's the article in The Nation: https://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-questions-about-last-years-dnc-hack/ https://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-qu... It now has a gigantic disclosure in front of it which takes most of the weight of the "findings" away.

throwaway5752 8y ago
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/346468-why-the-latest-theory-about-the-dnc-not-being-a-hack-is-probably-wrong http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/346468-why-the-lates... "In the end, Fidelis, FireEye, SecureWorks, Threat Connect and other CrowdStrike competitors all confirmed Crowdstike’s results."
- peteretep 8y ago
  What a great quote from that article: "I find it interesting that people are so eager to [ignore credible evidence], but willing to accept the forensics of an anonymous blogger, with no reputation, that no one knows anything about” Holy 2018.
craigc 8y ago
First of all, I was not presenting it as fact. Merely as a possibility and something to consider. Second, I read the disclosure, and all it does is point out that it is a possibility and not a fact. It also points out that the intelligence agencies have not provided any hard evidence that Russia was behind the leak, and they are the same groups who lied to the public about WMDs in Iraq to justify that invasion. This article also says that the original reports were published by Consortium News, the source I linked to.

throwaway5752 8y ago

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/346468-why-the-latest-theory-about-the-dnc-not-being-a-hack-is-probably-wrong http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/346468-why-the-lates... Your point two is is based on an embarrassingly incorrect assumption.

craigc 8y ago
I wouldn’t say it is embarrassingly incorrect. Nothing in that article proves that the report I referenced is not a possibility. I agree it makes it less likely because the files could have been copied multiple times which could change the metadata, but that doesn’t prove definitively that they were.
- throwaway5752 8y ago
  I would. I would go further and say it is reputation-threatening (if not ending), mortifyingly embarassing for the members of VIPS that wrote and signed off on the memo. If you had hacked a well-protected target, would you go in directly through your origin? There were probably dozens of hops, some of which may have been fairly indirectly. I doubt they leaked it directly, too.
  - craigc 8y ago
    I agree, but if you had financed the operation with Bitcoin would you have left a trail of hundreds of emails specifying each Bitcoin transaction and what they were used for like the indictment claims? Only saying that if they were dumb enough to do that they may have been dumb enough to go directly too.
    - throwaway5752 8y ago
      "left a trail of hundreds of emails specifying each Bitcoin transaction" Show me where in the indictment it talks about that? I only saw a reference to a much smaller number of emails.
- rhizome 8y ago